Guest essay: Shouldn’t energy be produced locally as well?

Comment

By Rory Sweeney

MPNnow

By Rory Sweeney

Posted Aug. 13, 2014 at 5:10 PM

By Rory Sweeney
Posted Aug. 13, 2014 at 5:10 PM

Canandaigua, N.Y.

A recent piece by Joel Freedman (“Special interests are the only winners in hydrofracking,” (MPNnow.com) requires some contextualization and fact checking to be of any informational use to your readers.

While I respect the fact that Mr. Freedman is a regular contributor and often provides exemplary commentary (I found his current column on mutual responsibilities in protection from abuse cases to be very reasonable and thought-provoking), he has missed the mark with his column on domestic-energy issues.

Not only is it rife with factual inaccuracies and lazy rehashing of hearsay (all of which must be addressed), but it also ignores the real issues. Our society demands cheap energy and will get it somewhere. We'll also do our best — whether we choose to accept this truth or not — to distance ourselves from the inevitable negative impacts.

Whether it's strip mining and mountaintop removal in Appalachia, addressing nuclear issues in New York State or any of the numerous global impacts of renewables, every energy source has downsides. We are indeed risking the protection of our health and natural resources, as Mr. Freedman so rightly warns, but only when fearmongers like him choose to focus on a few of those downsides from some of our energy alternatives and ignore the rest.

The true advantage of domestic energy production is that it's done domestically. We can watch it, regulate it, understand its needs, impacts and benefits and actively work to harness it to our communal benefit. We can be confident about exactly how the energy we use to turn on our lights is created, and we can rest assured that, since it was produced locally, it used the least amount of resources possible to reach us.

We can't do that with sources such as wind and solar that require resource inputs like rare earth metals, which are largely acquired from poorly managed, environmentally disastrous mines in Third World regions. Even people unhappy with our domestic regulatory frameworks must agree our regulators are vastly superior to almost all of their foreign counterparts.

The same concepts form the backbone of progressive consumer movements that demand locally and responsibly produced products. Yet those are often the same people most aggressively campaigning against common sense, world-class oversight and American industry when it comes to energy production.

If "think globally, but consume locally" is a pledge we are truly serious about, shouldn't it apply to our energy consumption as well?

Rory Sweeney of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, is a writer and media professional specializing in energy and environmental issues who has worked previously in the natural gas industry.